


and lead you through the streets of London

by Embersofthefrosts



Category: Original Work
Genre: But I liked it and it was my first time writing in second person, Drabble, Gen, London, London in Victorian Era, Originally written as a consolidation task on a poem, POV Second Person, Victorian, Victorian England
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2021-01-23 03:01:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21313081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Embersofthefrosts/pseuds/Embersofthefrosts
Summary: When the world is grey and grim, what else can you do but watch as it moves by, unchangingly.
Kudos: 1





	and lead you through the streets of London

Dirt, soot, filth. From the ground, the world was grim and dark. No person would willingly want to live here. The leering faces that raised their chin at your gross state, huddled on the ground. Even worse were the ones that came to shoo you from your latest spot to crouch at. 

If you had the choice you would move far away, away from the smog and shivering cold that came with the nights in the city. No, you would choose to live anywhere in the countryside, but you had no choice but to remain here. The place you were born, the place that sapped your every waking day. Your starving body wasn’t strong enough to even reach the outskirts of the city. The fatigue in your bones wasn’t going to get you any further than the end of the road. 

No, there was no such thing as leaving the city. If you were born there, you would die there. That much had been decided. 

With your hands caked in dirt and skin covered with a film of soot, no-one wanted to bring you in. Not the harlots' place, even with your young-ish age and somewhat attractive features - or they would be if they weren’t obscured by the essence of London. The people wouldn’t take in a problem like you, of course - who wants to take in a fatherless, brotherless, husbandless homeless person like you. 

Somedays you just spend, sitting there, hoping maybe you’ll get a stroke of luck and you’ll find a few pence to be able to buy yourself a night in a doss and perhaps an apple or loaf of bread. Most of the time you just spend your time watching people go past. You see many people. So many people (at least, on the days you can see) just seem to tread the well-trodden streets of London. And you seem to see them all. 

Some days there are children, running past, trying to make a game in the bleak and mucky streets. Most days there are adults who pass without a sparing glance. Most days there are richer, older, more powerful people who pass you noses held high as though they were above the dirty, the weak, the bad. Once there was a man who seemed fine, but who stood silently for a while, staring with sadness at you, and others, and you could occasionally see cock his head slightly at another cry of an infant. But between a blink and the next, he disappeared. 

And like everything else in London, he seemed to move on while you sat, seemingly stuck to the new norms, the walls you found a night’s cold embrace by. 

You were stuck to the moment you were in. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! hello. This was actually written as a consolidation piece to London by William Blake but I thought it worked well enough by itself, which is why it's under Original Work instead. Title is from Streets of London :)  
Hope you enjoyed!


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